Last week, while gulping down my morning coffee before the commuter bus arrived, I was flipping through a free local paper and read an article about how the unregulated and “filthy” street vendors in China were selling pork buns made with 60% cardboard filler, 40% fatty meat. I wondered what the hate was all about until I hit the mention of the Chinese govt attempting to “clean up” the vendors before the 2008 Olympics.
There has been a lot of criticism of contaminated and fake food ingredients coming from China since the contaminated ingredients in the massive pet-food poisoning in the U.S. earlier this year were traced back to China.
Seems the Chinese govt doesn’t take kindly to outside criticism - they announced on Friday that the country is blocking shipments of American chicken and pork from Tyson after some were found contaminated by chemicals and bacteria.
The closest I’m getting to street-food here is the takeout dim-sum place I visited in Chinatown last week for lunch. I was low on cash, which is why I headed up to Chinatown, and the cafe didn’t disappoint. For $3.05 I was able to buy enough dim-sum for lunch and dinner (a pork bun and six miscellaneous pieces). I was even able to scrounge up enough change to buy a soda.
The trade-off? Three dollars doesn’t get you a buffer. While I was eating a local, toothless crazy walked in, and after getting over her surprise at seeing me in the cafe, tried to talk to me in Chinese. The lady who took my order was rolling pot-stickers on the table behind me - a giant pile of raw pork and cabbage sitting in front of her. No fillers sight. And an infinitely more interesting lunch experience than than this:
